Tag Archives: Technology

Warning: This post is only for complete gadget freaks, of which I am admittedly one.

Around 5 years ago, I was on a train from New York to Washington DC to attend a historic meeting. A bunch of independent filmmakers had been summoned to meet with Dan Glickman, the new head of the MPAA to discuss issues related to independent film. I was on the train with five other filmmakers, and on the entire trip we were playing with our Treo 650’s. We were trading apps (yes there were app phones before the iPhone), beaming the apps to each other via infrared port, and showing off all the tricks we had learned on the device.

In point of fact, at that moment in the not too distant past, everyone I knew in the film business had the identical phone. Why? Indie filmmakers are always on the move, and need to carry their office with them wherever they go. The 650 was a beautiful device, and with some hacks and third party software, it did pretty much everything one could ask for, and more. (more…)

About 5 or so months ago, David Pogue wrote in the New York Times that he had tried out Twitter and wasn’t sure what it was good for. He wrote “Like the world needs ANOTHER ego-massaging, social-networking time drain? Between e-mail and blogs and Web sites and Facebook and chat and text messages, who on earth has the bandwidth to keep interrupting the day to visit a Web site and type in, “I’m now having lunch”? And to read the same stuff being broadcast by a hundred other people?” But then he had a revelation. He was on a panel and used Twitter to send out a quick request for an answer to a question, and got dozens of immediate responses from his followers. (more…)

14 days to go until the election, and from what I can see, everything is trending in the right direction. There’s a part of me that is beginning to allow myself to dream about the possibilities. If Obama does indeed manage to win, there’s no doubt in my mind that it’ll be a true game changer in just about every way. New found respect abroad? Check. Forever removing the glass ceiling on race? Check. Reinvigorating the American dream? Check. Then there is the other part of me–I guess you could call it the Cubs fan part–which keeps reminding me that the Democrats (like the Cubs) have a way snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. In the meantime, I’ve become addicted to CNN, watching the pundits and reading into every potential portent.